‘Kothi No 50’ barbs fly after Raghav Chadha's BJP shift, Punjab AAP MPs flag powers he held

E-PaperSubscribeSubscribeEnjoy unlimited accessSubscribe Now! Get features like After Raghav Chadha led six other AAP Rajya Sabha MPs out of the party and into the BJP, Punjab chief minister Bhagwant Mann took a pointed swipe at his former colleague — not by name alone, but by a house number. New Delhi, India - April 24, 2026: AAP Rajya Sabha MP, Raghav Chadha along with Ashok Mittal and Sanjeev Pathak leaves after meeting BJP President Nitin Nabin at BJP Headquarters in New Delhi, India, on Friday, April 24, 2026. (Photo by Sanchit Khanna/ Hindustan Times) (Hindustan Times)"A Rajya Sabha member who is now feeling suffocated in AAP due to personal interests had enjoyed the fruits of power in Kothi Number 50," Mann said at a press conference in Chandigarh on Friday, in which he later called all seven “gaddar” or traitors. The “kothi” or bungalow/mansion reference carried many meanings, one among them being the powers Chadha held, allegedly, in the first two to three years of the AAP's Punjab regime after a landslide win in 2022. House No 50, Sector 2, Chandigarh, is a sprawling bungalow close to CM Mann's official residence. That was where Chadha stayed during his visits to Chandigarh in that time. The residence falls under the CM's camp office quota. During those years, police and civil officers, businessmen, ministers, MLAs and party leaders could be seen waiting to meet Chadha at the house. Opposition leaders and news reports described him as "a parallel centre of power" in the state. Chadha did not live in the house at least since last year, after his relationship with the party leadership had begun to visibly deteriorate. AAP's own Lok Sabha MP Malvinder Singh Kang, speaking on Saturday, flagged his powers. "We should have kept a check on Raghav Chadha," Kang told The Indian Express, “I feel the party made a mistake by giving him so much power.” He also said, "There's no two opinions on this. We put Raghav Chadha on a pedestal." Kang told news agency PTI that he personally observed Chadha interfering in CM Mann's decisions — something the party denied officially when the charge was made earlier by opposition parties such as the Congress, SAD, and even Chadha's now-party BJP. Balbir Singh Seechewal, AAP's sole remaining Rajya Sabha MP from Punjab, also spoke of Chadha's hold over Punjab's administration. "At that time, he was the supremo of Punjab, and all the eyes of the administration — especially the officers — were on Kothi No 50. Such big responsibility, such big power was given. What has happened now, only they know," Seechewal said in an interview with a web channel. Also Read | Raghav Chadha’s tea invite, Sahney's call: Seechewal on why he did not exit AAP, remains its lone RS MP in Punjab The characterisation of Chadha as the “real power” in Punjab was in active circulation from opposition parties already. The AAP insisted the “power centre” arguments were humbug. Punjab BJP president Sunil Jakhar had posted on X in March 2024: “Raghav ji has been the apple of Kejriwal's eye so much so that he has been acting as the super CM in Punjab demeaning elected CM Bhagwant Mann." Jakhar said Chadha had been “removed from the scene” ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha polls which “raises genuine doubts about rumblings within AAP”. Also Read | ‘Who’s the traitor now?': Sidhu Moosewala's song on ‘traitors’ returns as jibe at AAP and Raghav Chadha Union minister Ravneet Singh Bittu, who made a Congress-to-BJP move like Jakhar, spoke about this issue as recently as two weeks ago, after Chadha had publicly fallen out with the AAP and was speculated to be joining the BJP. "No matter what anyone says, Raghav Chadha was the all-in-all of the Aam Aadmi Party. Today he stands on the other side. So, how many internal secrets will he reveal in the coming days?" Bittu said in an interview on April 12. "Now, even the people who held the government in their fist and controlled it are speaking," he'd further said, alluding to the campaign for the early-2027 assembly elections having begun. Earlier in the month, Bittu said, “Ragav Chadha used to ride in the car of CM Bhagwant Mann and acted as super CM of Punjab.” Both Jakhar and Bittu changed their tone as Chadha actually crossed the floor. Jakhar welcomed the defecting MPs, saying they had “at the right time, chosen to leave the sinking ship of AAP”. Bittu's pivot was striking given his personal remarks, such as making fun of Chadha having walked the ramp once at a fashion show for his uncle. Asked about the past digs, Bittu said Saturday night: "The catwalk I was talking about, that catwalk has been semi-finalised so far. The final catwalk will be done by Bhagwant Mann. You will get a chance to see that too." Also read | ‘Frustration was growing…’: RS member Vikramjit Sahney on what he told Kejriwal at meet before 7 AAP MPs' big move He added: "I told you that Raghav Chadha cannot come to BJP at all. Because the party he is in, he had a two-year term left as RS MP" — alluding that now since two-thirds of the AAP RS MPs had “merged” together, there was no legal hurdle. A parallel charge — that Chadha was an outsider exercising power over Punjab — predates the defection too, but has now made a return. Back in 2022, after the AAP won 92 of 117 Punjab assembly seats, and went on to fill its Rajya Sabha nominations for all seven seats from the state, two of its first picks drew immediate criticism: Chadha, a Delhi resident who is ethnically a Punjabi Hindu, and Pathak, who is from Chhattisgarh. The other nominees were Harbhajan Singh, and businessmen Ashok Mittal and Sanjeev Arora, all Punjabis but largely out of the political or AAP spheres. Also Read | Gaddar, baahri, catwalk: 3 words echo in Punjab after AAP's Raghav rupture, with many meanings at once Akali Dal leader Bikram Singh Majithia pointed this out after the defection: "The sad part is that Punjab has suffered because for as long as these MPs have been in Delhi, they never talked about Punjab's water, Punjab's border areas, Punjab's farmers, Punjab's industry, Punjab's territorial issues, Punjab's capital Chandigarh, Punjab's university." He added: "I want to congratulate Raghav Chadha and everyone else. Everyone knew that all these MPs were going to join the BJP." AAP MP Kang also said on Saturday that the party should have considered "ground-level leaders from Punjab" for the Rajya Sabha seats. Kothi No 50 has since been in the news as AAP national convener Arvind Kejriwal reportedly stayed here during visits to Chandigarh, with Mann describing him as his guest staying at the CM's camp office. The BJP alleged expensive renovations were made. But Mann defended against it: “The day I took oath (as chief minister) on March 16, 2022, government houses were allotted to the chief minister and other ministers. Kothi No 45 in Sector 2 is the chief minister’s official residence. Similarly, Kothi No. 50 in Sector 2, about which they (BJP) are making misleading claims, is mentioned as the camp office of the chief minister. It is part of my house. It is a camp office/guest house,” he said. Mann went on to add that Chandigarh is a union territory which is directly under the Centre, where the BJP is in power. “Show me one letter that says we have allotted a house to Arvind Kejriwal,” Mann said. Chadha, for his part, has not addressed the Kothi No 50 remarks made by Mann or Seechewal, or other parties including the BJP in the past. On his departure from AAP, he said only that the party had "completely strayed from its principles, values and core morals" and that, "I did not want to be a part of their sins." Chadha, who voted in Punjab in the 2024 LS polls, has described the state as his “soul”. It's not yet clear if he is being pitched for a role in the assembly elections due in about 10 months. The BJP is fighting alone this time, not reviving its alliance with the SAD that the latter broke during the 2020-21 protest against three farm laws that PM Narendra Modi rolled back eventually. Aarish Chhabra is an Associate Editor with the Hindustan Times online team, writing news reports and explanatory articles, besides overseeing coverage for the website. His career spans nearly two decades across India's most respected newsrooms in print, digital, and broadcast. He has reported, written, and edited across formats — from breaking news and live election coverage, to analytical long-reads and cultural commentary — building a body of work that reflects both editorial rigour and a deep curiosity about the society he writes for. Aarish studied English literature, sociology and history, besides journalism, at Panjab University, Chandigarh, and started his career in that city, eventually moving to Delhi. He is also the author of ‘The Big Small Town: How Life Looks from Chandigarh’, a collection of critical essays originally serialised as a weekly column in the Hindustan Times, examining the culture and politics of a city that is far more than its famous architecture — and, in doing so, holding up a mirror to modern India. In stints at the BBC, The Indian Express, NDTV, and Jagran New Media, he worked across formats and languages; mainly English, also Hindi and Punjabi. He was part of the crack team for the BBC Explainer project replicated across the world by the broadcaster. At Jagran, he developed editorial guides and trained journalists on integrity and content quality. He has also worked at the intersection of journalism and education. At the Indian School of Business (ISB), Hyderabad, he developed a website that simplified academic research in management. At Bennett University's Times School of Media in Noida, he taught students the craft of digital journalism: from newsgathering and writing, to social media strategy and video storytelling. Having moved from a small town to a bigger town to a mega city for education and work, his intellectual passions lie at the intersection of society, politics, and popular culture — a perspective that informs both his writing and his view of the world. When not working, he is constantly reading long-form journalism or watching brainrot content, sometimes both at the same time.Read More